War Of The Worlds – The Extinctive Cut

“Its not enough to survive... One has to be worthy of survival. “ Commander William Adama.

Sadly, such a notion is not universal. That might explain the survival of repellent lead characters. After two hours of the original, viewers will likely root for the alien raiders to capture, consume and silence our ordinary fellow humans.
Boon is biting off a lot here, trying to paint lipstick on a cancerous pig, attempting to carve the crap without leaving behind a corpse.

Video: MPEG 720 X 480p. Let’s get this out of the way. Once you hit PLAY and have to choose which version of CBB’s edit, Extinctive is transposed to Extincitve. Oversight that should have been caught long ago.

In both Extinctive and Purist cuts, once past Chapter 10, resolution is poorer. This seems more noticeable in Extinctive, especially with blacks and deep shadows.

Audio: 2 Channel AC3. Subtitles - yes! Sound is really good here, with a nice dynamic range.

Narrative: I watched both versions, and both are cohesive and logical. Extinctive ending held an unexpected surprise. Can’t say that I bought it from a logical point of view. Questions about how long a future time frame are we looking at? Food supplies? Water? Politicians? Still, it might be taken as a Hollywood 70s ending. The Purist was OK and I had no problem with omitting the microbial aspect.

Enjoyment: Did someone say extras? Man, Boon is generous with the goodies! Trailer, Deleted Scenes, the shack with and without Robbins, a chunk of CBB edits to boot.

If one means “enjoying the actual film” - I disliked the original and my dislike for the edit is only marginally less. Problem is with source material. Characters you can’t wait to get killed. Blame script or directing. And Spielberg has a curious history of terrorizing children into screaming. Not judging, just saying. There is less of that in this edit, and CBB reimagines Robbie’s path well.

Recommended to fans of the original. Naysayers will still be displeased.

Review by Syfo-Dyas — February 14, 2010 @ 9:51 am

This movie was ruined from the get go. All the crowds magically know where the safety zones are being set up at, and of course they all move in herds making them selves easy prey…

…actually, come to think of it, moving in herds and making themselves easy prey does kind of sound like a lot of people I know…

Of course there is the fact that Tom Cruise is in it, with his 2 dimensional acting, though thankfully he wasn’t quite as Tom in this movie, then again I could not help but remember who I was staring at and how stale the characters were.

Anyhow, aside of the fact that this edit is about a lost cause, I still got to hand it to the editor for doing such a great job! Everything was edited beautifully and seamlessly till the end. The whole scene where Tom Cruise puts a grenade up the walker’s reversed rectum did not work out well because right after they fall, you suddenly see his daughter looking off into the horizon, then it suddenly switches to a bunch of people walking to the fall out shelter. I felt everything ran smooth up until that moment. Perhaps if the editor would have paused on the girl’s staring scene, then faded it out slowly, while fading into the crowds walking to the fall out shelter.

Then again, how did the crowds all know where the fall out shelter was? You’d think that communications would pretty much be wiped out at this point, and mass organization and planning impossible. It wasn’t like people could sit on the comfort of their couches, eagerly waiting on new instruction from the TV to guide them along, and I’m sure all the Radio DJ’s went home, or died in their studios.

I think what I would have done is try to find a way to provide an ending where we just presume they are dead, but given that I’m only a fan of this film’s effects, I don’t think I’ll be taking on that effort and will end by saying that if you are a fan, this is probably the best version you can watch at the moment. My complaints aside (most of them not the editor’s fault), this is a drastic improvement over the original with it’s typical Steven Spielberg ending.

Review by jjrdias — November 19, 2009 @ 2:35 am

Finally got round to watching v2. It’s an ambitious fanedit, and given what Spielberg left for (fan)editors to work with, a difficult one. Sure, there may be some issues – i actually didn’t notice anything too distracting in the shack sequence -, but even so i feel any they are not major. I really like the extinctive ending. It’s brutal, yes, but does take the picture away from Spielberg’s “happy end formula”, showing, IMHO, a bit more respect for the audience’s intelligence. And the last line whispered by Fanning was very well placed. That’s the Cut i’ll be watching and showing off to friends. The Purist ending may suffer from the lack of voice-over to fully expose what caused the demise of the aliens, another reason i prefer the EC.Very good DVD presentation – great menus and always happy to see editors going the extra-mile in providing subtitles.

In conclusion, an 8 outta 10.

Review by zeppelinrox — November 15, 2009 @ 5:04 pm

Thanks for another great edit boon.
As mentioned above by Rock Savage, there was one wtf moment when, in the shack, Ray call out to his daughter and runs to her.

Everything else was great.
FYI, I prefer the second ending, where the world doesn’t get blowed up real good.

8/10

Review by shadowland — August 3, 2009 @ 6:32 am

*This rating was given before reviews were required*